Tradition Culture And Aesthetics In Contemporary Asian Cinema

From the critically acclaimed Malaysian film Sepet to the on-going box office successes of the films created by Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, cinematic texts from the nations of Asia are increasingly capturing audiences beyond their national boundaries. Tradition, Culture and Aesthetics in Contemporary Asian Cinema explores the rise of popular Asian cinema and provides an understanding of the aesthetic elements that mark these films as 'Asian cinema'. Incorporating examples of contemporary films from China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and India, Peter C. Pugsley gives readers a fresh insight into the rapidly developing discourse on popular Asian media. The book's chapters focus on the aesthetic features of national cinemas and the intersections of local/global encountered in the production, distribution and consumption of contemporary Asian films. By tracking across some of the most influential countries in Asia the book is able to offer new perspectives into the visual and aural features that create greater understanding between East and West. As distribution and technological advances make Asian films more readily available, an understanding of the different aesthetics at play will enable readers of this book to recognise key cultural motifs found in cinematic texts from Asia.

This ground-breaking book explores the moral dimensions of sexual imagery in contemporary, general-release Asian films. It examines debates that arise over aesthetic styles and the cultural and traditional influences that determine the content and impact of these films. The social and regulatory environments for filmmakers across Asia reflect distinct national and cultural differences. In just the past decade, for instance, Indian cinema has rapidly moved from representations of coy and submissive female protagonists to highly eroticized leading ladies unafraid of flaunting their sexuality. On the other hand, the cinema emerging from the Chinese mainland has been much more circumspect in its representations of overt sexuality, at times in conflict with other Chinese cinemas from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This use of sexual imagery or morally questionable film content raises on-going debates into censorship and the use of state or industry controls to protect certain sectors of society from exposure to particular narratives or images. Film, like all forms of art, fulfils a number of aesthetic functions for local, regional and international audiences. As distribution and technological advances make Asian films more readily available across the globe, an understanding of the different aesthetics at play will enable readers of this book to recognize key cultural motifs in representations of onscreen sexuality and the surrounding controversies found in cinematic texts from Asia.

"Asia produces more films than any other part of the world. With chapters on Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, the book presents the most authoritative assessment of contemporary Asian cinema available. Each chapter describes the cultural aspects of popular film production, analyzing key films in the context of the national, the regional and the global. Topics covered include: film theory and Asian cinema, popular film genres, major industry figures, the "art film", connections between the state and commercial interests, cultural policies, representations of national identity, trends in international co-production, transnational and diasporic dimensions of Asian filmmaking and viewing, the politics of language choice, the impact of emerging technologies on filmmaking practice, and modes of exhibition. This book is ideal for students, scholars, and anyone interested in popular culture and Asian films in a changing world."--

This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema within the transnational context. It addresses several urgent and pertinent issues such as the distribution and exhibition practices of East Asian genre films, intra-regional creative flow of screen culture, and genre’s creative response to censorship. The volume expands the scholarly discussion of the rich heritage and fast-changing landscape of filmmaking in East Asian cinemas. Confronting the complex interaction between genres, filmic narrative and aesthetics, film history and politics, and cross-cultural translation, this book not only reevaluates genre’s role in film production, distribution, and consumption, but also tackles several under-explored areas in film studies and transnational cinema, such as the history of East Asian commercial cinema, the East Asian film industry, and cross-media and cross-market film dissemination.

How do East Asian cultural heritages in shape film? How are these legacies being revived, or even re-created, by contemporary filmmakers? This collection examines the dynamic interactions between East Asian culture heritages and cinemas in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

This book explores the range and dynamism of contemporary Asian cinemas, covering East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia), South Asia (Bollywood), and West Asia (Iran), in order to discover what is common about them and to engender a theory or concept of "Asian Cinema". It goes beyond existing work which provides a field survey of Asian cinema, probing more deeply into the field of Asian Cinema, arguing that Asian Cinema constitutes a separate pedagogical subject, and putting forward an alternative cinematic paradigm. The book covers "styles", including the works of classical Asian Cinema masters, and specific genres such as horror films, and Bollywood and Anime, two very popular modes of Asian Cinema; "spaces", including artistic use of space and perspective in Chinese cinema, geographic and personal space in Iranian cinema, the private "erotic space" of films from South Korea and Thailand, and the persistence of the family unit in the urban spaces of Asian big cities in many Asian films; and "concepts" such as Pan-Asianism, Orientalism, Nationalism and Third Cinema. The rise of Asian nations on the world stage has been coupled with a growing interest, both inside and outside Asia, of Asian culture, of which film is increasingly an indispensable component - this book provides a rich, insightful overview of what exactly constitutes Asian Cinema.

Asian cinemas are connected to global networks and participate in producing international film history while at the same time influenced and engaged by spatial, cultural, social and political transformations. This interdisciplinary study forwards a productive pairing of Asian cinemas and space, where space is used as a discursive tool to understand cinemas of Asia. Concentrating on the performative potential of cinematic space in Asian films, the contributors discuss how space (re)constructs forms of identities and meanings across a range of cinematic practices. Cities, landscapes, buildings and interiors actively shape cinematic performances of such identities and their significances. The essays are structured around the spatial themes of ephemeral, imagined and contested spaces. They deal with struggles for identity, belonging, autonomy and mobility within different national and transnational contexts across East, Southeast and parts of South Asia in particular, which are complicated by micropolitics and subcultures, and by the interventions and interests of global lobbies.